After the best part of three months following a backpackers trail around South East Asia we had spoken to over a hundred people about what their travel route was: where they had been and where they were going next. After a while we noticed a regular pattern emerging, with lots of people doing a combination of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand (either starting in Vietnam and ending in Thailand, or vice versa) and more often than not, after that, their next stop would be Malaysia (often Kuala Lumpur) or Indonesia (typically Bali). Up to this point in our adventure, we hadn’t spoken to a single person who was going to be heading to Russia (at any point on their trips). It perhaps isn’t surprising: going to Russia is somewhat going back on yourself from Bangkok, however when we worked out our round-the-world route, to be started in January of this year, we wanted to follow the sun as much as possible (to avoid having to take too many different types of clothes and also as we prefer the sun to the rain which we see enough off in England). If we had taken the most obvious option (in terms of not going back on ourselves) we would have gone to Russia in January, however we then would have been faced with temperatures as low as -67° C / -88.6° F, at least that was the temperature on the 18th January this year, in Yakutia (which is about 3,300 miles/5,300 kilometers east of Moscow). If the bitter cold wasn’t enough to contend with, Vodka freezes at -24° C / -22.4° F and without Vodka how can you really get the true Russian experience?

From Bangkok, all that separated us from beginning this next leg of our adventure was 4,735 miles (7,620 kilometres), or 12 and half hours of flying plus a couple of hours layover in Moscow (this is the longest flight Gemma has ever been on). After completing our flights and exiting St Petersburg airport, our plan was to hail an Uber to take us to our hostel, however, the queue appeared to be rather long and we had seen a pattern in other countries where Uber drivers who are 20 minutes away often accept your request for a ride relying on you to cancel (as you don’t want to wait around that long) meaning they get some money for their cancelled fare (even though they often don’t even head towards you). So we went for the next best option, an official airport taxi, complete with meter, to take us. Had we spent two minutes researching this before getting in, we would have read that overpriced taxi scams are notorious all over Russia – immediately Steve’s suspicions were aroused, whilst there was a meter, it looked very shoddy, and the taxi itself to be in a less than pristine state. Still, at this point, even if the taxi cost £15/$20, which is three times the Uber rate, it isn’t a fortune to pay in order to get back without waiting (after a long flight). Before getting out of the car park the driver had to exit the vehicle to stop the boot rattling (with the meter still running), and once we had got out of the airport and onto a dual carriageway, the meter seemed to be indicating £10 (after less than five minutes into a 45 minute journey). Steve checked with the driver and when confirmed that was the price, Steve immediately told the driver to pull over and stop (after our taxi scam experience in India, we weren’t going to let the façade continue again) – he reluctantly pulled over and told us St Petersburg is expensive, paying the best part of £100 for a taxi is fine, what else are we going to do, just sit at the side of the road? As it goes, yes we would rather do that then pay £100 for a taxi, he quickly started to negotiate, how about £60 or what about £30 or £20 even – but Steve had already hailed an Uber, which was less than five minutes away, and would do the remainder of the journey for £3 – our taxi driver pretended to have never heard of Uber and was not best pleased that we wouldn’t be continuing our journey with him. Thankfully the Uber turned up a couple of minutes later and took us to our hostel at the advertised price – much simpler, much cheaper and when we finally arrived it made Gemma much happier. Whilst we didn’t know when booking, the hostel had a retro theme, making it very welcoming to us! Whilst Gemma refused the offer of a welcome drink, Steve felt it too rude to refuse so enjoyed a shot of cherry liqueur after the best part of a full day of travelling which pleased the staff

We opted to book our Trans Mongolian adventure through Lupine Travel, a travel company based in Wigan in the UK (although we didn’t know this when booking, as we did it all via the internet). Their tour goes from St Petersburg to Beijing in China, however it involves spending several days, back to back, on a train between Moscow and Irkutsk – we didn’t want to do this, so we had a customised version of the tour which meant they booked us tickets between various stops in Russia that we wanted to see (St Petersburg, Moscow, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and Irkutsk) and allowed us to do what we wished in each of these cities. They provided excursions, trips and guides for Lake Baikal/Olkhon Island in Russia and in Mongolia. This was perfect for us, as working out what to do and how to navigate a city can be part of the fun (when you aren’t being scammed for £100 per taxi ride).

When we ventured out into St Petersburg we were both blown away by how beautiful the city was, large buildings with impressive façades, clean streets and a very European feel. This isn’t surprising when you consider that Peter the Great founded St Petersburg with the view that it should be a window to Europe based on his travels around Europe including Venice and Amsterdam. From a Europeans point of view, this was definitely a gentle introduction to Russia. We spent quite a while walking through the streets seeing the many attractions dotted around the city, starting with Kazan Cathedral.

But as we walked through the streets, one building kept catching our eyes, the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood which is iconic and easily recognized with its medieval Russian architecture and inspiration from St Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, so we went over for a closer inspection.

It certainly lived up to any expectations we had – such an impressive building which unique architecture which sets it aside from the other buildings in St Petersburg which also had an impressive interior (somewhat similar to the Blue Temple in Chiang Rai, Thailand).

One of the must-see attractions in St Petersburg is the Hermitage Museum which is home to a staggering number of paintings from some of the most highly distinguished and recognized names, including Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Renoir, El Greco, Rubens and Manet. If you looked at each piece in the entire museum for one minute, it would take 11 years to see everything in the museum. Based on this, we used the museum’s phone application to find out where the most famous works of art were and then worked out the shortest path to get between them. Other patrons in the gallery seemed a little confused to see us walking straight through huge rooms full of exquisite artworks without so much as glancing at them, but we had less than a day (therefore much less than 11 years) so had to keep to our priority list – which we managed to do with 30 minutes to spare.

As you can imagine, it requires quite a considerable sized building to host all of these works of art, and the building itself is quite impressive in its own right.

As we wandered around St Petersburg and spoke to various Russians including shop workers, the staff at the hostel, people on the street, teachers and young students, one repeated pattern we found was only a small percentage of people speak English, perhaps 1 in 10. Even more interestingly, school children did not seem to know any English outside of saying hello, which we haven’t experienced in any other country. It isn’t that we feel, as English people, we should be treated specially, but it makes us wonder how Russians are able to communicate with any country outside of Russia, given that English is the international language that nearly all countries use (and very few people outside of Russia speak Russian). Perhaps this is a throwback to the cold war and Russias desire to survive without influence from the west? However, whilst Russians initially felt a little bit cold or stoic, when we persisted and used Google translate (in particular the conversation mode when you can speak in English, it then repeats what you said in Russian, allows them to respond in Russian and then repeats what they said back in English) their faces typically lit up. We went from being outsiders who they had no idea how to communicate with, to people they could talk to and find out more about. Why were we in Russia? How are we finding it? Where else will we go? When we were preparing to head to Russia, we were a little apprehensive, as the British Governments advice was to expect hostility due to the political situation between Britain and Russia (concerning poisonings on British soil allegedly committed by Russia) however we were relieved to find that everyone we spoke to was very friendly. They had zero interest in talking about this – once we had made it clear we don’t follow football (which is the usual topic that people try to engage in with us) we would instead be greeted with questions of curiosity about our trip and about England itself. St Petersburg is one of the few cities that we have visited on our trip so far, that we could easily imagine living for a year or more, with all the shops and recreational activities available that can be enjoyed in England, paired with large spotless streets lined with huge beautiful buildings.

After spending time in Asia and seeing many temples, it made a nice contrast to instead be surrounded by churches and cathedrals (the main religion is Orthodox Christian), St Isaac’s Cathedral, in particular, was well worth a visit, partly for the decorated interior and partly because of the commanding views it gave (being able to see back over to the Hermitage Musem and Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood that we had previously seen.

During our stay in St Petersburg we saw a variety of music in the street, from Jazz Festivals to electric violinists, it certainly felt like a city with a strong artistic side to it.

Whilst in St Petersburg we did enquire whether there were any tickets available to see a ballet performance in one of their world-renowned ballet theatres, however leaving it until the last minute turned out not to be a good idea due to a combination of shows being sold out, or shows simply not being on for the dates we were there. We’ll add it to the list of things to do next time we are in St Petersburg!

Our final destination for St Petersburg was the train station, for the first taste of the Trans Mongolian Railway, which will, eventually, take us all the way to Beijing. Initially, we had a night train taking us to Moscow. There were a few obstacles to overcome, such as working out what all the numbers on our ticket meant, how the boarding process works, where we put our bags, etc. but once we had overcome these small difficulties, we were safely onboard a train, with two beds to fall asleep on, whilst our train worked through the night to take us to Moscow, the capital of Russia.

 

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